Bekkers' Bulletin - June 2007

THE ROAD NICK TRAVELLED

The 160km stretch of road to Phayao is mountainous and twisty. The motorbike ride there was fast and exhilarating and over too soon for my liking. But all good things come to an end and the trip to Phayao was not about the bike ride, but the meeting of the Phayao Bible College board, of which I am a member, for my sins.

As usual, the meeting was preceded by a sumptuous Thai lunch prepared by the director’s wife, followed by large portions of rich cake baked by Dr Ursula, a British missionary, who has been in Thailand for longer than I have lived, and has served at the college as lecturer and administrator for the past 26 years. With stomachs full and eyelids heavy we made our way to the meeting room. The first few items on the agenda were pretty standard. From about item 5, however, things got interesting. That’s when we got to hear about how many pigs had been born, sold and slaughtered since our last meeting in January. At present the pig population is standing at 134 – not too shabby considering that that’s worth around 300 000 Baht. The average market price of pork was discussed in detail, as well as the merits of raising wild boar as an alternative to pigs. Next we discussed how the fishery was doing and some time was spent talking about what type of fish grew faster, tasted better and sold better at the market. From there, we went on to discuss the orchards. The litchis have not done too well this season – the market is flooded and when taking into account the cost and hassle of watering and preparing fertilizer for the trees, it just isn’t worth it anymore. The rice crop is looking good and so are the veggies. Speaking of fertilizer, one of the professors at the college came up with the idea of marketing the abundant supply of pig manure. Much to everyone’s delight, its been selling like … hot cakes.

After the agricultural matters were dealt with, we dealt with the more mundane, such as finances, the student intake, staffing shortages, and future meeting dates. Meeting over, it was back on the bike and the race was on to get home before the rain caught me.

(Phayao Bible College is situated in the small town of Phayao in North Thailand. It has 201 students, all of whom board there, including married students with children. The College is totally self-sufficient: they grow all their own food and enough to sell to cover their other expenses. Everyone is involved in the running of the farm, cooking of meals, washing dishes, cleaning, selling produce, etc, as well as studying theology. The 9 full-time lecturing staff also live on campus and work side-by-side with the students in running and maintaining the College).

P.S. The rain won!

4 YEARS DOWN THE ROAD

We first met Kesara in Singapore on our Orientation Course in March 2003. She was in the room next-door to ours when we spent one month at the OMF International Headquarters. It turned out that Kesara was a Thai lady, going to work as a missionary in Cambodia. We spent a bit of time chatting to her, but it was hard – her English was not very good, and our Thai was non-existent. But still, it was fun to ask her to speak Thai and to hear this crazy language we were about to start learning.

The last four years have been focussed on learning Thai – there have been moments we’ve felt like giving up, times when we’ve been despondent and we’ve even wondered if we are actually making progress. We still have communication breakdowns, we still say the wrong things, we still have people staring at us blankly when we’ve just said something in our best Thai.

There was a special visitor at our OMF conference this year – Kesara! She has just started her home assignment, home to Thailand, and was invited to join in. She stood up to give some encouragement to the missionaries in Thailand, and thanked us all for our work here…. It was very touching, and guess what - we understood it all.